“There’s no rain,” she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
“No, love,” he said gently. “There is no rain.”
The Huntress drew in several deep breaths. “I can smell no rain in the air, either. It’s a dry storm. By the Goddess, I’ve always hated the damned things! Dangerous-they bring deadly lightning and the chance of…” With a look of horror, she stood. Orienting herself quickly, she turned so that the wind was blowing directly into her face while she looked southward out across the length of the Centaur Plains. “Oh, Goddess, no!” she cried.
Cuchulainn followed her wide-eyed gaze. The horizon was on fire. As they stood staring with horrified awe, a shaft of lightning snaked to the ground, igniting another, closer, section of the grasslands.
“We have to get off the plains. Now,” she said, slipping on her vest and strapping the bow and quiver in their proper place over her back. “A grassfire is deceptive. In no time it can engulf you.”
“The gelding isn’t far from here.”
“Wait,” Brighid said before Cuchulainn sprinted off. “Help me cut two pieces out of the tent.”
He didn’t question her, but went to the tent and began to slice through the thick hide.
“Big enough to cover us,” she said, grasping the torn edge and pulling it so that it would tear more quickly.
“Cover us?” His cutting faltered.
“If we can’t outrun the fire we have to find a gully, or better, cross-timbers with a stream. We get in the streambed and cover ourselves with the hides. If we’re lucky the fire will pass over us.”
“If we’re not lucky?” he said.
“We suffocate or burn to death.”
He grunted and began cutting the sections from the side of the tent with renewed energy. When the two pieces of the tent fell free, neither Brighid nor Cuchulainn spared a glance at the silent, bloody remains within.
The gelding was hobbled not far from the tent. Cuchulainn flipped open his saddle pack and tossed a skin of water to Brighid. She drank greedily while he rolled up and then tied one of the pieces of the tent to Brighid’s equine back, and the other behind his saddle. When he was finished he turned to the Huntress. She was standing with her head down, petting Fand and murmuring endearments to the whimpering wolf cub.
Cuchulainn didn’t let himself dwell on what he had found in the tent and what had almost happened to his wife. He couldn’t. If he did, he would be lost. His stomach was tight and hot, and he still felt the preternatural clearness that always came over him during battle. He’d need a warrior’s strength to get them through what lay ahead. But he couldn’t stop himself from going to her and lifting her face. Holding it between his hands he felt the shudder that passed through her body when she met his eyes.
“You came in time,” she whispered. “Thank you.”
He couldn’t speak. He could only kiss her with an intensity that edged on violence. She met his passion with her own, wrapping her arms around him and drinking him in.
Lightning streaked across the sky, breaking their kiss.
“We have to ride hard. The wind is with the fire,” Brighid said.
“Back to the tors?”
“No. There’s not enough water there to stop the fire, and we couldn’t climb fast enough to get away from it.”
“East, then. The tributaries of the Calman River finger into the plains between the tors and Woulff Castle. My father and I fished there often in my youth.”
Brighid nodded. “Let’s hope the drought hasn’t dried them up.”
“If it has then we’ll just have to make it to the river itself,” Cuchulainn said, swinging aboard the gelding.
He might be able to make it. The gelding is fresh and well-rested. I won’t.
“Brighid,” Cuchulainn turned in the saddle and their eyes met in the next flash of lightning. “I will never leave you. We either live or die-together.”
She knew he was speaking the truth. This man would never leave her, not even to save himself. Then Goddess help me not to get us both killed.
“You lead. I’ll be right behind you,” she said.
The warrior dug his heels into the gelding’s sides and they raced into the northeast with the wolf cub streaking behind them.
Their flight from the Centaur Plains seemed to be a descent into an Underworld that had been abandoned by the Goddess. The thunder and the lightning served to illuminate vignettes of a nightmarish reality. Animals of the plain rushed past them-deer, fox and other small mammals like rabbits leaped hysterically into their path before bounding away. And with the animals came the smoke. At first it was just a brief, bitter taste on the southern breeze, but as the night lengthened the air became thicker until Cuchulainn pulled up his gelding, and tore his shirt into long swatches of linen that he soaked with water from one of the skins.
“When it gets really bad tie it around your nose and mouth. It might help.”
Gasping for air Brighid nodded, and they both drank thirstily from the skin. “I wish it was wine,” she said between coughing fits.
Cuchulainn smiled at her. “It will be soon. My mother’s temple isn’t far from the Calman tributaries.”
“I don’t suppose I need to ask whether she’ll know to be there to greet us.” Brighid tried to keep her tone light, but she was still struggling to get her breathing under control, and the intermittent flashes of lightning clearly showed how hard her equine body was trembling.
“Mother will probably have dancing girls and a parade all prepared for us,” he said, attempting to match her tone, but he guided his gelding close to her. His face was drawn and his eyes worried as he studied the Huntress. “Let’s rest here. We have some time.”
“We have no time,” Brighid said. Fand came panting up to them and Brighid bent, pouring water in her hand for the wolf to lap. “There’s a brave, good girl,” she told the wolf. Then she glanced up at Cuchulainn. “You lead. I’ll follow.”
Cu nodded tightly and pointed the gelding’s head to the north again, and kicked him into a steady lope. Suddenly lightning forked the night with brightness, clearly illuminating the shape of a lone centaur moving almost parallel to them. In the white light his coat shone gold and sliver, an exact copy of his sister’s.
“Give me your bow,” Cuchulainn said.
“No. If it’s to be done, I’ll do it.” At a gallop she notched the bow and waited for the next strike of lightning. When it came she sighted and let fly an arrow, which embedded itself in Bregon’s flank, causing him to stumble and fall hard to the ground.
At a flat run, Cuchulainn’s gelding beat Brighid to her brother, and the warrior leaped from the horse’s back, drawing his sword and pressing it against the centaur’s heaving chest so hard that it broke the skin. The next lightning flash illuminated the scarlet drops that trailed down his colorless chest as if he was a half-finished painting.
“This is just so that you don’t doubt that my sword works in this realm,” Cuchulainn snarled.
“Don’t kill him, Cu,” Brighid said quietly, putting a trembling hand on her husband’s arm. “At least not yet.”
But her brother was ignoring the warrior. Instead he was staring at the rope burns and teeth marks that had left red, angry wounds on his sister’s body.
“What happened to you?”
Cuchulainn’s growl matched the wolf’s low angry rumble. “The centaurs you left behind did as you ordered them. They captured her. They bound her with ropes so that if she moved she would choke herself. Then they began to rape her.” With each sentence he pressed the sword more firmly into Bregon’s chest and fresh blood welled under the razor-like blade. “I made certain they didn’t complete your orders.”
“No,” he said faintly, eyes widening in shock. “They were just supposed to hold you until I returned.”
“Until it was too late to stop the war!” Brighid cried. “How could you do it, Bregon? How could you cause such bloodshed and hatred? Wasn’t our mother’s hatred enough to fill you full for a lifetime?”